wine and cookies.

when i bake for Brenda, i drop them off with her husband at the Elgin Y where he works. my last order caught the eye of Kay, their PR director, who asked me to provide some take-away cookie favors for guests at a wine auction fundraiser. at first they were to just be the glasses, which would have looked darling with some gilded filigrie stem design. but when i think of wine, i also think of toga'd Olympians with big piles of grapes. [tangent: i pick wild grapes and make jelly and grape juice. to DIE for, mmmm.]
so i used a simpler glass design, kept the gilded look by using pearl dust on all the surfaces, and baked a mini maple leaf and mini sideways Christmas tree against the stem for more stability and that little nod to Bacchus. the grapes were icing dots and pearl dragees. the "glass" was more like metal with bronze and silver pearl dust over brown and grey icing, respectively, but mom and dad have a totally 70s coaster set that's 'mercury glass,' with like, the profile of the god Mercury in the center. plus a set of tumblers from their (1969) wedding shower that i inherited that have old world maps on them, where North America is Terra Incognita, and they're all snazzed out with gold details. so i may have unconsciously nodded to Bacchus twice with these Me-Decade throw-back Mediterranean glassware effects. all that from being unable to make clear royal icing.
Kay used many exclamation points to tell me that they were awesome and very well received. i believe her; i got an order for an encore. thanks Kay!
...and coming soon, pumpkins, horseback riding, and a thank-you. and later, a bake sale, Thanksgiving/my birthday, and deer hunting. hmm...
and also this post will be seen by my 5000th visitor, unless 2 more people showed up while i typed this. thanks everyone for stopping by, i hope my silly little cookies made ya smile. :)

iCookie

who? yeah, it's an owl. everyone is doing owls, i'll do an owl. the twig is fondant. back to me.
on this machine that Steve Jobs invented, i too learned of his passing. on the ol' tube, i listened to Anderson Cooper talk to Steve Wozniak, and i learned that Jobs had the crazy ideas and hand-shaking skills, Woz was the builder. Jobs would say, "we need a way to carry around 17 days worth of music in a back pocket, can you program that?"
i've been blogging about looking for a job, but i think i might do well with a Jobs too. i know how to make the cookies, to bake them, ice them, render a skillful image; i'm missing that entity that can make my thing happen to everyone. someone to hammer out that railroad 'cause katie's driving our cookie train. Wozniak was described as the guy who would have built it all for fun. i know i'd bake for fun. [i'm sure my dad would grin a bit at the idea of a cookie operation that he owns and manages, while i'm the artist/laborer. i say "fine, you do the paperwork, stay out of the kitchen." :)]
but i could use someone to sell the idea to the world that cookies are it, cakes are so last millennium, and you want cookie art like s/he and i are gonna bring you. and the irony--thanks to the 2 inspirational Steves, i could click a few buttons on this computer thingy and show you thousands of talented cookie artists. may we all be so fortunate to know people that make it happen. someone who believes magic can and should be baked, and who can tell everyone how great it is to hold pictures in your hand.
"who" indeed.
(thanks Steve.)